Kurdish Prufrock: Eliot's "Prufrock" and Bekas's "An Autumn Letter". A Comparative Study

Abstract

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by the famous modern poet T. S. Eliot is oneof the masterpieces not only of the poet himself but also of the modern English poetryat large; it, therefore, is widely read and influenced a large number of poets andwriters in different parts of the world.The Kurdish poet Sherko Bekas is one of the outstanding Kurdish men of letters whoplayed a vital role in the development of the Kurdish poetry from its classical andromantic phases into a modern type that divorced the traditional forms of poetry infavour of a poetry that responds to the demands of his people and literature in the lastcentury until the present time. He was a good follower of the world literature andpoetry especially the Arabic, Spanish, and English poetry. This led him inevitably tobecome familiar with the poetry of world writers who influenced him greatly to anextent that he either addressed them directly or borrowed their ideas to composepoems.In this context, he penned a poem entitled "An Autumn Letter" at the footnote ofwhich he wrote that its idea is taken from a poem by T. S. Eliot. This study therefore,tries to compare and contrast this poem to its mirror idea, Eliot's "The Love Song ofJ. Alfred Prufrock" in order to show the extent of the latter's influence upon theformer poem.